1st Birthday Party-1.....Mom-0

Brandon's 1st Birthday Party was a success! So much good food, lots of friends came over and of course tons of presents to open!

Even before Brandon was born, I always knew I wanted to throw him a huge 1st Birthday party. Everyone has their own idea of "huge" but I just wanted to have lots of food, music, people, cake and gifts. As he gets older, I want him to be the kid who has the coolest birthday parties. I know I'm setting myself up for disaster in the future, but as long as my son is happy I don't really care. Believe me, for one of his birthday parties there WILL be a bouncy castle and for his 3rd birthday, he'll be going to Disney World to Mickey's Halloween Party. Spoiled rotten little dude....

Moving on. I started planning this party months before his birthday. I was searching all over Pinterest, for decorating and food ideas, searching blogs for ideas and just used my own creativity as well....

I had originally planned to do a The Very Hungry Caterpillar themed party but finding decorations for that was impossible (not for my friend Megan though....) and some of the food from the story that I wanted to serve was going to be out of season. So we changed the theme to Pixar movies, mainly Toy Story, Cars and Monsters Inc.

The other stressful part was the invitations. Yes, to say that I was stressed out about a 1 year old's birthday party is true....but it's in my nature. Here is the inviation we sent out:

Getting him to take this picture took us HOURS....but it turned out so cute! On the back we had the blue wall, white cloud scenery from Andy's room in Toy Story. I was so happy with the way they turned out!

Planning the party was so much fun and I had alot of help on the big day. I of course took a couple hundered pictures so here are just a few :)



All of a sudden, I'm crafty :)

HA!

Best Birthday cake in the WORLD.

Archer!

B and Emsley :)

B and his friends Finn and Ellie.



Realllllly trying hard to share...

All cleaned up and ready for presents!

 

On the day of Brandon's actual birthday, I started to feel not 100% but I ignored it. Same thing on Friday and Saturday morning. I kept telling myself "Just get through this party and you can die in peace later." And I did. 2 hours after everyone left the party, I went to bed and tried to go to sleep but I kept getting more and more nauseous. I was up ALL night long vomiting and was in bed all day Sunday-even lifting my head made me sick. Lovely.

Birthday Party-1 Mommy-A Big Fat 0.

12 Whole Months! 10.18.12

The day I've been dreading and anticipating for an entire year has come. Brandon turned 1! Of course, I took hundreds of pictures so I'll have to make a few different posts to I can get as many photos as I can on here to share with everyone.

On the day of Brandon's birthday, I was actually awake before he was. I got in the shower and ready for the day when I finally started to hear him talking to himself. I opened up his bedroom door and sang Happy Birthday to him. I cried through most of the song but he loved it :)

Happy Birthday! The flash was a little too bright for him :)

 



 For breakfast I made him chocolate chip banana pancakes in the shape of a B (that's what it was supposed to be in the shape of but making a B in pancake mix was easier said than done...). He loved his birthday pancakes!

Later in the day we went and ate lunch with daddy and Uncle Blaine and waited for Aunt Amy and Uncle Shawn to get into town. For Brandon's first birthday dinner, we had a delicious dinner at Alpine Inn in Hill City.

Now I don't know if this is just me but the ENTIRE night I was playing over in my head what was happening exactly 1 year ago. Although I was completely unconscious 97% of the time, it was such an incredible day that I couldn't help but think of every minute of what I remembered...

Anyway, dinner was amazing as usual. B ate his dinner with Aunt Amy. He so nicely shared her potato and toast (or he ate it all himself, whatever you want to believe) and ordered a nice big piece of birthday peanut butter chocolate ice cream pie :)

Watching Elmo (of course) waiting to go to lunch with daddy.

Birthday swag.

Haha! Loving the lettuce wedge with ranch.

His favorite thing to do with daddy. Mitch holds his legs and Brandon just stiffens up. The kid has mad abdominal muscles.



He laughs histarically when Mitch does this with him. Everyone in the restaurant thought it was cute :)

 

The day after his birthday was a sad day. Shots. Lots of them AND a blood draw. I was sick about it all morning long, so I drug Amy with us. When the girl came into the room to take his blood, I was sure this was going to be a fight. But Brandon took it like a champ and just sat there staring at her like "Why aren't you letting me move my arm??" However, with shots, we weren't so lucky-all 3 of us were crying (weirdos!)...

After the dreadful shot experience, we went to have breakfast at Colonial House and of course, Brandon got a big cookie for being such a good boy. Yes, I've started bribing my child now.

I helped him eat this of course....


Yes, I'll say it again, I can't believe my son is 1. I only cried twice which is much better than I expected. Brandon has made our lives complete. That is really the only word that I can think to describe how I feel. We've come such a long way from a year ago when we brought this newborn baby boy home and I said to myself, "What do I do now??" and I cried all day long when Mitch first went back to work. He is my life and I can't imagine 1 second without him.

Fun at the Pumpkin Patch!

And the fall fun continues for the Linsters! Today we went again with Sam, Kriste and little Archer to a Pumpkin Patch here in town. Sam's sister Bethany and her pup Rupert (Oakley's identical twin) joined us too. Even though the boys had no idea what was going on and the patch was pretty small, it was so much fun!

B and Rupert

We picked out our Halloween pumpkins that we won't be carving because daddy doesn't like pumpkins and throws up every time one gets carved. So, we respected daddy's pumpkin issues and opted for a different approach.

Brandon and all of his pumpkins!

 

 

Putting Elmo into the pumpkin



His painted pumpkin!